Opinion: Why Rand Paul is Right on Syria

American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow John Bolton on the case against U.S. intervention.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... I ... you know in advance for your goal was not winning that I think the last fifteen years of secretaries of defense with Senator Udall is not for ... me and I wanna go to war in Syria ... of course not everybody the percent of Americans will say no ... we say no ... we don't wanna go to war in Syria either ... it's not over yet as the president is not asking you to go to war ... to ask you to declare war ... he's not asking you to send one American troops to war ... he's simply saying we need to take an action ... they can degrade ... in that capacity ... of the man has been willing to kill his own people by breaking a nearly hundred year-old prohibition ... and will we stand up and be counted to say we won't do that ... welcome to Opinion Journal I'm Mary Kissel that was a very testy exchange yesterday ... between Secretary of State John Kerry ... in Kentucky Senator Rand Paul on the merits of intervening ... in this area ... yesterday our Bret Stephens made the case for intervention ... and today we've got American Enterprise Institute senior fellow John Bolton here ... to make the APUs it case welcome and master plan to do it ... are you against any kind of intervention or just the kind of intervention then Secretary of State Kerry ... was describing ... well that exchanging displayed is a little bit like the Syrian civil war to mean neither side is acceptable ... in outlook that the fact is we don't know what intervention President Obama is actually proposing and I think that's a big part of the problem he says ... that he wants to ... vindicate his drawing ... of a red line ... but he also talks about his intervention being proportionate and limited ... and if that's in fact what he does he will not establish conditions of deterrence he will not ... persuade aside or more importantly the regime in ... Tehran to give up their nuclear weapons program so in that sense I'm very worried that because ... it goes pee on the loss of credibility the president has already experienced given ... March's ... that ... evidence of the use of chemical weapons by side it will implicate the entire United States ... and I think a limited response will simply tell Iran ... this got essentially free sailing ... toward nuclear weapons but if the US doesn't respond in a limited way or in a way that you might prefer a stronger kind of intervention ... what message does that send to US allies like Israel in the region ... it sends a message that we have a president whose word you can trust ... but I don't buy the argument that the president is the equivalent of the United States do not buy ... the president that sits behind a desk in the Oval office is not a cardboard cut outs of flesh and blood person among the flesh and blood person changes ... the message that comes out of the Oval office changes when Ronald Reagan replaced Jimmy Carter ... it made out of the night and day that was pretty close in the same is true in the case of whoever replaces Obama ... ok but we still have several years left of the second term of the Obama administration ... global view calmness Bret Stephens on the show yesterday he argued ... we don't have time to wait here ... and in fact ... that ... Israeli action against Iran is more likely if we don't intervene so again I ask you ... why we do not support with the president is asking for ... I think the Israelis should strike ... Iran's nuclear weapons program ... whether we intervene in Syria or not ... there's no way that Obama is going to use force against Iran and a weak response here or no response ... gives the Iranians ... exactly the same message ... I'm deeply worried about the next three and a half years I didn't vote for Obama in large measure for that reason but the American people didn't you know the saying ... you get the government you deserve so we've got twelve hundred days of danger that's a fact ... that is a fact Tehran's influence is also extending from Tehran now potentially to the Mediterranean ... again doesn't that argue for U S intervention now ... but if the intervention is weak it will send the wrong signal and every indication is from the president's own words which is all the evidence we have at this point ... a proportional limited response will not be enough ... ok American Enterprise Institute senior fellow and former investor United Nations John Bolton